


Life on Mars

by Justafewthingstosay



Series: Penumbra Podcast Pain [4]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Like the fluffiest of domestic fluffs, Other, Peter can't cook, This is only fluff my dudes, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-18
Updated: 2019-11-18
Packaged: 2021-02-12 14:15:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21477715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Justafewthingstosay/pseuds/Justafewthingstosay
Summary: Juno and Peter had had a long day, so they decided to just make some dinner and curl up on the couch, but things didn't go as planned.
Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Series: Penumbra Podcast Pain [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1525274
Comments: 12
Kudos: 75





	Life on Mars

**Author's Note:**

> Folks, I am procrastinating my penumbra bang with writing fluff, so please bear with me.
> 
> Title from David Bowie's "Life on Mars"

“So what do you want to eat tonight?” Juno asked while stretching leisurely. They had a long day behind them. Someone had broken into the Intergalactic History Museum and Peter had had so much fun taking out his old Rex Glass Alias that Juno hadn’t felt like stopping him. 

It was only when guns were drawn that Juno felt a pinch of regret that he had let Nureyev come. He wanted nothing more than to know that his master thief was safe from the world. Safe in his office with Rita, but then again, he knew that Peter wouldn’t have let him go in alone. 

Juno remembered looking at the man, seeing his sharp teeth peek through those silky lips as he slashed one of the goons with his knife and the happiness that he felt that Peter was there with him had hit him with full force. 

So had the fist that he wasn’t paying attention to. It flung him backwards, almost making him stumble, but he caught himself on his wobbly feet before that happened. 

The goon lifted his hand to punch him in the face again, but Juno was quicker, pulling his blaster and shooting the man straight into the stomach. 

It was set to stun, of course, but it still knocked the man out cold.

“Rex! We need to get out of here, now!” 

  
And so they did, but not before Peter gave his goon a good punch straight in the throat, catching the small vase in one hand and running towards Juno the second he knew he was holding it safely. 

They ran out of the Museum quickly, ducking into an alleyway around two blocks away from it, heaving and holding themselves upon their knees. 

“Do you have it?” 

“Of course I do, Detective. They don’t call me a Master Thief for nothing,” Peter grinned and Juno couldn’t help but smile back. 

“I guess you don’t just use those hands for thieving either, do you?” Juno smiled out through his huffs.

“Oh, you know the answer to that, Detective,” Peter smirked, which is how they found themselves at home, on their couch. 

Peter was sitting with his back against the arm of the couch, his long legs sprawled over Juno’s lap and he was holding a book in his hand when Juno asked where they wanted to eat. 

He dropped the book,  _ A Brief History of Turtles as we understand them _ , on his chest to look into Juno’s eye.    
  
“Really up to you, dear. I heard there was a new restaurant a block from here that just opened, we haven’t been to that one yet.” 

Juno looked down to his hands for a moment, staring at how they had settled on Peter’s muscular calves, and squeezed them just a bit before answering. “I thought, well, I thought maybe it would be fun if we cooked together tonight if you’re up for it?” 

As Juno looked at Peter, he saw fear in the man’s eyes, as he had never seen before. Juno reached over and carefully took Peter’s hand in his, which seemed to startle the other out of his trance. 

“You okay, Nureyev?” 

Peter quickly nodded. “Yes, yes, of course, dear. There is - Well, there is just something that I have to tell you.” His face changed, he became weirdly serious and Juno sat up straighter. 

Peter took a deep breath and looked down at his book, fiddling the pages lightly with his fingers. 

He whispered something almost inaudible. 

“Come again?” Juno said carefully. 

“I can’t cook, okay? I know you probably expected me to be able to do it, but I can’t. Everything I try to make I just burn-” he put his hands on his face, hiding behind them. “I just am terrible at it, and I thought I could just… take you out to dinner every night for the rest of my life.” 

Juno simply smiled and rubbed his face with a hand in annoyance, before slowly pulling one of Peter’s hands away from his face. He looked terribly embarrassed. For a second he looked into Juno’s eye before looking away. 

“Were you ever planning on telling me?” Juno grinned and Peter just let out a soft groan before shaking head. 

Juno threw his head back in a loud laugh, holding his stomach with one hand, while the other was still holding Peter’s hand. 

Peter let his other hand drop from his face, only to pick up a pillow from the couch and throw it at Juno’s face. 

  
“You’re an asshole, Steel,” Peter pouted and Juno just leaned over to kiss that pout off his face. 

Peter threaded his hand into Juno’s curls and tugged slightly. Juno knew it was payback for his slight mockery, and it only made him kiss the other deeper. 

Peter let his one hand run over Juno’s back, settling in the small of it and pulling him closer to him. Juno obliged happily, letting himself be pulled to his love. 

But just when Juno really let himself lay down on the other, he heard Peter’s stomach growl and he pulled away only for Peter to chase after his lips with a desperation that he had grown accustomed to from the thief. Peter didn’t reach his lips, though, as Juno put his hand on his silky lips. 

  
“You seem hungry,” He teased. “Want to make something?” 

The other only shook his head.

Juno rolled his eyes, but the smile didn’t leave the lips that Peter had just kissed. “Come on, you useless thief, I’m teaching you how to cook.” 

As Juno stood up, Peter jumped up and stole a kiss from the other. “Useless thief, huh? I beg to differ, I have stolen thousands of things.” 

Juno crossed his arms on his chest and let out an almost annoyed huff. “Like what?” 

Peter looked up as if he was thinking, only to move towards the kitchen. “Your heart, for example.”

The detective followed with a laugh. “That one doesn’t count, I gave that to you freely.” 

Peter wouldn’t tell Juno, but the thought of Juno letting him into his heart, allowing himself to love Peter so fully and unconditionally, was almost too much to handle for him sometimes. So instead of becoming the putty on the floor like his knees wanted him to, he walked into the kitchen with a little too much fake confidence, before jumping up to sit on the counter. 

“So what are you gonna make, Detective?” he grinned, his hands placed next to his thighs, his shoulders pulled up just a little.

“WE-” and Juno really emphasized that word. “-are going to make Spaghetti. It’s easy, and it’s quick and it’s one of my favourite foods, so get down here and help me.”

But Peter didn’t move. Just swayed softly from side to side, grinning smugly.

  
“Are you gonna come down here and help me make food or not?” Juno asked, his voice laced with fake annoyance. 

The other man, still sitting on the counter, looked up, but avoided Juno's eye. “My legs are really sore from walking all day, dear, and I just plain don’t think that I could stand up without some encouragement.” 

Juno only scoffed while pulling out two pots from his shelf. “If you think that I’m going to come over there and kiss you to encourage you to make food, then you’re just wrong, Nureyev. Your encouragement should be that you are literally not getting any food if you don’t help me. Also half of your butt is on the stove, so cooking might be a little hard.” 

The detective didn’t need to look to know that Peter was pouting, he knew how to play that man like a fiddle. Problem was that Peter knew how to play him too, but to his surprise, the thief got up, gracefully dropping to the ground and turning around so that he was facing the counter. 

“So, how can I help?” he asked, he sounded a little defeated, just slightly. So Juno turned around, handing Peter the bigger pot, and dropping a small kiss on Peter’s lips.    
  


“Fill that with water for me, please. And then salt the water, you will need more than you expect, but not too much.” 

As Peter turned around to walk to the sink, he suddenly had the feeling that he was incredibly stupid. How much salt was too much salt? Couldn’t Juno have just said a measurement? Why did the detective have to make things so hard? 

But he did as he was asked. Dropping the amount of salt into the water that he felt was reasonable, before handing it back to the other. 

He stared at the water, which was slowly getting hotter, worried that he might have fucked it up, might have put too much salt. He was so focused on it that he didn’t notice that Juno was talking to him until he felt a tap on the shoulder. 

  
He jumped a little at the sudden contact, so out of it that he had forgotten where he was. 

  
“You okay? You’ve been staring daggers at my poor pot for about two minutes and I’m slowly starting to grow concerned.” 

“No, I’m fine. Just worried about the salt amount,” he admitted sheepishly and Juno shot him a loving smile. 

“If it’s too little, we’ll just resalt it while we are eating, if it’s too much we’ll drown it in the sauce. Don’t worry, it’s not gonna be that bad.”

So they waited until the noodles seemed done, draining them before they moved over to their small table. Filling their plates and smiling at each other over their small accomplishment. 

“Well, dig in,” Juno smiled and loaded his fork with spaghetti, Peter did the same, proud of the fact that they had actually managed to pull this off.

But as they took the first bite, Juno coughed into his hand and Peter could understand why. They were basically just eating salt. Peter had poured way too much into the water and it came to bite him in the ass. 

For a moment, he thought that Juno would be mad, that he was going to be disappointed that Peter couldn’t even do that. But his wonderful Detective did something that Peter should have expected from the beginning. 

He laughed.    
  


He threw his head back, opened his mouth and started laughing, loudly, openly. He laughed like Peter had made the best joke in the entire universe. As if nothing that anyone would ever say, or had ever said could reach the comedy in this scene. 

And as Peter watched his Lady, heard the sound of that gorgeous laughter, a sound which was more beautiful than any song anyone had ever composed, he joined in with the laughter. Watching Juno over the table, watching the detective wipe the tears of laughter from his eye, even though he was still laughing loudly and the tears would be there again in a minute. 

Peter felt his own tears prick at the corners of his eyes, but he didn’t bother wiping them away, focusing too hard on holding his stomach with one hand and his mouth with the other. 

As their laughter slowly died down, Peter smiled at Juno, raising his eyebrows and resting his head on one of his hands. “So, I think I added a little too much salt there.” 

Juno wiped his eye once more, even lifting the eye patch to wipe the tears there too. “Yeah, you could say that, but it’s not too bad for your first time.”

“It’s pretty bad, Juno.” 

Juno just nodded and added a drawn-out “Yeah.” 

“So, any other dinner plans you got in that pretty head of yours or do you want to just starve tonight?” Peter asked smugly. 

Juno looked into the pot with the sauce, they still had a lot and he didn’t want it to go to waste. 

  
“How about we try this again. We should still have some noodles and I can show you how much salt to add this time, so we don’t... Well, we won’t have a situation like this again.” 

So that was what they did, they threw away the noodles that were more salt than noodle and started the process again, keeping the sauce on low heat, so that it wouldn’t be cold when the noodles were finished.

After a few minutes, Juno pulled out a noodle from the pot with a fork, blew on it and held it to Peter. “Are they done?” 

Peter ate the noodle off the fork carefully, making sure not to burn himself, but as he bit down on it, Juno could hear the obvious _crunch_ so he deemed them not done before Peter even confirmed it. 

They waited for the noodles to be perfect before they took the pot off the stove, drained the water and returned to the table with the noodles and the sauce. 

When they both had a plate of their second attempt in front of them, Juno twirled some of them on his fork and held it towards Peter, who already moved forward to take the bite from the fork, before Juno pulled it back. 

“No no, get some noodles on your fork.” This didn’t really explain anything to Peter, but he did as Juno asked, holding his fork out to Juno, who clinked their forks, as one does with wine glasses before smiling out a soft: “To our horrible cooking ability.”

Peter grinned, before he added, “To us,” before moving his fork back and eating the bite that was on his. 

It was a lot better than the first try, it actually was really good. Which was a good thing, because Peter had the feeling that if they had had to order food after their failed first attempt, he would have starved. 

Juno looked just as pleased with their dinner as him, so they finished their food in mostly silence, due to their shared hunger. 

  
  
  


After a good dinner and successfully cleaning their table, they settled down on the couch together. Juno was leaning against one arm of the couch, Peter settled between his legs, his back against Juno’s chest. He had his comms in his hands, while Juno was flicking through the channels on his TV. 

“Dear?” Peter asked after a few minutes. Juno made a small noise of acknowledgement, to show he was listening. “What are you doing next Tuesday?” 

Juno moved his hand into Peter’s hair, running his fingers through the soft black strands. “Nothing, if I remember correctly. Why?” 

His lover didn’t turn around, just tapped on his comms a few times. “Cause I just signed us up for a cooking course. I would rather not have to repeat what we did today.” 

Juno chuckled softly, before leaning forward, pressing a kiss onto the back of Peter’s head. 

“I love you, Nureyev.” 

Peter put his comms on the table, and leaned further back into Juno’s chest, tilting his head upwards to look into the other's eye. “I love you just the same, my dear.” 

At that moment, something pulled on Peter’s heart. Something that he had never expected to happen, the domesticity of it made his heart soar. He had Juno and Juno had him and for a second, in this moment of peace, he knew that that was all he needed.    
  


And if Juno had thought the same thing, he didn’t mention it. Just dropped another kiss on Peter’s forehead and pulled him closer, before they both focused on the TV, trying to find something to watch that wasn’t too horrible. 

There, on a ratty old couch, in a small apartment in Hyperion City, Peter found his happiness and Juno found it as well. 

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to yell at me on Twitter or Tumblr, you can find me on both of them under Justthingstbh


End file.
